Altitude Sucks

The Red Bear lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. He and I have been talking about making a weekend of bicycle riding up there for some time now. Plus, any excuse to get some time away from the wife can never be a bad thing. I had once gone up there in March for a Buckethead concert, ridden with Red Bear up Rist mountain, and then did some additional riding in the canyons.

This past weekend Fort Collins had a cycling festival which includes a couple days of racing, and today was the Rist Canyon race. The Rist race starts at 5,000ft, climbs pretty much straight up to an altitude of 8,240 ft, and then drops down through the canyons, covering a total of 64 miles.

As a cyclist living in the Midwest, I had always dreamed of doing a mountain race as all we have to work with here is maybe a 100ft climb if you are lucky. Watching the epic stages on the Tour de France was always fascinating, with the racers pitting against each other in the blatant dares against gravity as they climbed sheer walls. I woke up before the alarm Saturday morning in anticipation of my first race involving climbing over 3000ft that didn't involve doing endless loops in order to attain it.

Racing in the Midwest usually involves criteriums, which is basically sprinting circles around the block for an hour. This would be totally obnoxious and pointless if hadn't been for the other 100 people who had shown up to do the same thing with you. Racing well in a criterium requires 3 things: getting rid the instinct of hitting the brakes as you go around the corner, being able to sitting in the draft doing little work as possible without feeling guilty, and then be remorseless as you sprint around that person who worked his ass off the entire times as you cross the finish line. I figured that a race involving a mountain climb would be a little more interesting than everything else I have seen, plus it's kind of hard to crash when you are going 4mph.

The race started out gentle enough. Everyone pretty much understood there was no hope of getting the "drop" on the climb and being first to it didn't mean squat. The first few foothills leading to the mountain were tough as the pace definitely was on and it was intended to start shaking up the order of the group. I was definitely on the low end of this totem pole as I probably weighed 30lbs more than the people at the front. These guys were whippy greyhounds and I was a beefy corn-fed Midwestern guy by comparison (and I'm the skinny guy back at home.)

As we hit the mountain switchbacks, the grade was not the punishing, but the pace was solid. It was pretty much like doing a 40K time trial effort. The group started to stretch out, totally based on the riders power to weight ratio at aerobic capacity. I was really hoping it would play out like a TT and just arrive at the top with a nice solid effort. That lasted about 5 minutes. At the first increase in grade, there was a attack that was almost an all-out sprint, and then right back into TT effort. There was no place to coast/hide to recover. You either kept up with the attack or you did not.

In watching the Tour de France, I never really understood the whole teamwork thing on the mountains until now. The GC would often have one of the domestiques lead them up the mountain like they were pulling, but at 6-8mph, there is no draft benefit. I understood it now. The less "attacks" you have to cover, the less you need to dig into your anaerobic, and this means you can keep your aerobic power up. It helps alot to chase someone, and the faster someone can lead you up, the less your competitors will be able to make attacks.

Plus, mentally, it's really tough to concentrate when you're going up. Imagine doing intervals on the trainer without a fan or a breeze to cool you off. Climbing at a TT pace in the sun and getting a 4mph return in speed means you get hot. Really hot. I hadn't expected to be exploding in that much heat, covering my top tube in big drops of sweat.

As the climb went up, the attacks were getting tougher and tougher to cover, and the ability to recover from them was less and less. It was the altitude. My legs weren't burning, but it was the sensation of a slow suffocation by having your head stuffed inside a plastic bag. Going to a bigger gear to use muscle to power out of the funk wasn't going to work either. I was already at a 80rpm cadence with the 39/27 and it was sinking into the 50's as the climb approached 15% grades. Eventually I didn't make the selection. It was one of those moments where it was like a slow motion fall. They first got away by just a little bit. "You'll make it back up there once you can get those legs spinning" I told myself. At the next incline, they got a bit further. "OK, well just keep climbing the effort up when the incline gets less and get back on" and all I did was keep the gap even. Then the next incline was a drop, then the next one, and then again, until finally I just snapped in two and all I could do was pedal enough not to fall over. Cracked. Shelled. Exploded.

At this point, if you are not acclimated to altitude, there is no recovery. Red Bear had warned me about what to expect. Being a Midwest transplant himself, he knew all about what to expect when coming from the low ground. You might be able to throw down some effort, but the recovery isn't going to happen. Thankfully, I was near the top, but unfortunately the grade had now increased to 18%. I did the longest stand-up act, huffing and puffing away to get 40rpm, fearing I might have to do the "paperboy" to get up the last few switchbacks. The spectators shouted "the last turn" and I found the strength to grind around it to the summit.

The summit greeted me with an abrupt view of the canyon below with a straight 20% decent to the bottom of it. I could see my race speeding down around the bottom of the decent. Descending down a grade of 20% means you hit 60mph almost instantly. The air is so thin up there that the top speed you get is incredibly high, but it feels like you're only going 30mph at sea level. The problem is that even though it feels like 30mph, you are definitely carrying the kinetic energy of 60mph, so if you were to go down, you are going to skid for a long, long time. So yes, I was scared.

The first part of the decent was this long straight stretch down at 20%, but then it lessens out into something more gradual and switchbacks. After the first decent and into these switchbacks, I got caught by a chase group of the bigger guys who couldn't keep up on the climb. I was like "Great! People to work with!". Except these guys knew the canyon. I did not. They hit those switchbacks with insane speed and I was left slamming on the brakes so hard I could smell them burning. It was pretty much game over and I still had another 40 miles to go. I looked down at my water bottles and realized I had gone through most of what I had brought with me on the climb up. The rest of this race would be a hot, long, thirsty, ride for me.

The canyons were pretty and there were alot of shattered racers on the course in the same predicament I was in. Not in the race anymore, but needing to get back. A couple people tried to play pick-up with me and I wasn't interested. Too tired, too hot, too thirsty. I had never been in such a "just survive this" funk before, even when I had accidentally gone a 142 mile bike ride last summer. Got mixed in with a small group that I presumed was working together to get back home, but their surging and uneven pace was irritating me. I just wanted to even grind back home, not big chunks of effort and coasting, as that wasn't my style anymore since getting into triathlon.

Got back to the end and started hitting up the Gatorade coolers full of water. I think I drank most of one. I looked at my jersey and saw it was faded from all the salt left behind from all sweating I had done. Saw other people come in, desperate for water, and they hit the coolers hard too, running them dry one by one. Eventually it got funny as more riders kept coming in, expecting water to be in the coolers, and getting animated in their frustration as they found each one empty. I almost expected one them to throw them Donkey Kong style at the chips and salsa vendor at one point. I must have gorged on a half dozen pieces of pizza, then passed out.

Racing in Colorado is tough. If anything, it showed me how impressive racing in Colorado is. It's easy to get in a draft of someone faster and stay with them on level ground, but to race up a mountain is a completely different story. I'm not sure what I really learned from this other than racing up a mountain is really tough, and I basically suck at it. Maybe next time I'll smarten up and carry an oxygen tank with me.

That's Creepy

I work near Schaumburg, which is the home of a very large forest preserve known as Busse Woods. I find it fortunate to be close to a resource like this as I can sneak out at lunch and get in some workouts. The forest preserve has an 8 mile loop that is awesome, because it's a beautiful ride through the forest without any car traffic to worry about. In the summer time during my "lunch breaks", I would often head there with a camping shower bag, go for a run, hose down in the parking lot, and be back in the office before anyone knew what I was doing.

Last week on one of my recovery rides through the loop, I passed by an area that just had a tremendous stench of road kill. It was so bad that I actually stopped the bike and looked around to see what it was causing this horrendous odor. Based on it's smell, I assumed that it had to be some animal lying next to me on the side of the path. Didn't see anything except grass and bushes. As this is Cook County, one of the few refuges for deer around here is the forest preserve, and there are so many deer here, riding at night is hazardous because it's like the deer are having a cocktail party on the path once the sun sets. I assumed that because the amount of smell and it's perceived distance away from the path, it had to be either a dead deer or a dead body. The morbid side of me said "it's time for those mobsters to come back and re-bury that body because they didn't bury it deep enough last time". After all, this is Chicago, a town known for Al Capone, corruption, and the mob. Images of the "Goodfella's" digging scene came to mind -"Did you want a leg or a wing?"

I rode off without giving it much more than a second thought as I was sure it was a deer or some other really stinky small animal that kicked it just off the path. Then today, something in the news, coupled with some strange closure of the path by the police I saw yesterday stuck me. The paper said that the police had found the body of a person who had been listed as an "endangered missing person" for the past month. There was even a little graphic showing where in the forest preserve where the body was found - right were I had stopped to investigate the smell. The article said the body was badly decomposed and had been there for a while. I'm not sure what to think about it. Had I been more curious, I could have helped put closure to the case, or perhaps coming across a badly decomposing body would have scarred my memory for life.

Forest preserves around here are a little on the odd side at times. Liz would tell me while she worked at the arboretum that people would routinely commit suicide there. Once in a while they would come across people canoodling naked along the path. Cook County forest preserves are even sketchier sometimes. At noon and on the weekends, it's perfectly normal, filled with normal people doing perfectly normal activities. With my workout schedule taking place sometimes at off-peak hours, I've come across alot of suspicious things. I've seen people who obviously have no interest in nature, drive in, pull up to another person waiting in their car, exchange hands, then drive off. I've seen another person get into another person's car and then put their head in their lap. I once backed a car into a spot, which I guess meant something at the time because all these guys started approaching me, and then backed off when they saw me pull out a bicycle. I'm not being coy or anything, as I'm pretty sure what's going on. But jeez, can't we all just be normal for a change?

How a little R&R turned into alot of T&A

The plan for the weekend was to head up to Minneapolis and hang out with the bunch up there. After Eagleman, there was mandatory down time for recovery and I thought it would have been alot of fun to hang out with the friends and have no worries about any 4 1/2 hour bricks that needed to get done. These are my Ragbrai buddies and we had intended to get in some riding in Wisconsin, catch the bicycle racing in Stillwater, and then perhaps see how bad my tolerance for alcohol has become.

As I headed up there, I had a little worry about driving through Wisconsin, as I heard Baraboo was under water and I was pretty much passing through that town. With the Friday night traffic and construction, the going had been pretty much rough. I had hit Rockford, which was 60 miles away, in 2 hours and I was sort of fearing it was'nt going to get much prettier. I get a call from Marshall who tells me that I-90 (the route I'm going) from Madison to Mauston is pretty much under water and I might have to take side routes. Just then the traffic comes to a halt. Fantastic. I was about 10 miles to Madison and the expressway became a parking lot.

I remember Bill was coming down from the Twin Cities to Madison for the Horribly Hilly Hundred, which is just an awesome ride involving insane climbs and twisty decents. I quickly call him up and discover that he is just arriving in Madison after spending 6 hours to make what should have been a 3 hour drive. After some quick math of hours driving vs. hours not driving for the weekend, I decide I'm hanging out with Bill tonight and doing the HHH instead.

The HHH is awesome. It's a ride that starts in Blue Mound, Wisconsin and loops in and out of the Tyrol basin, covering some 10,700 feet of climbing over 124 miles and 5,700 over the 67 mile route. The riding is through fabulous countryside and the roads are like a roller coaster. Last time Liz and I tackled the Tyrol basin area, I had a deadly combination of a 12/23 and 95 degree heat that threatened to topple me over on some of the hills. The ride this year was a fortunate 70 degrees and it was beautiful when I discovered I had a 12/25 with me this time.

The ride started out crowded, giving Bill and I a preview of what is going to come in just a short number of weeks on Ragbrai. The first significant climb gave Bill a reminder that he needs to get in a few more miles in before Ragbrai and I had to leave him behind. The 12/25, while better than the 23, really didn't make the climbing gentler, it just gave me enough cadence room not to come to a complete stop and fear flopping over. The last climb is brutal, as it's about a 1,000 foot climb within less than 4 miles. I knew it was coming up, and was "restin' up" for it on the flats leading to it. I got passed by several people just hammering away because they thought they were near the end. I found most of them walking their bikes up about half-way through the climb. I don't blame them. I was grinding out a whopping 4mph with 37rpms at one point, and that was as fast as I could go.

Once I finished at the top, I got a call from Matt. He's leaving for a fellowship in Buffalo, New York next week and wanted to know if I could go to Chicago for his last weekend in town. I finally find Bill on his journey up the hill (he smartly had a set of compact cranks on his bike), wish him luck back to Minneapolis, then head off to see Matt. I luckily was able to carpool downtown with Bob and Brenda, having seen her and the baby bump for the first time. I've been in such a busy schedule with working/training/sleeping, I have not seen anybody for months. Going downtown was probably my first social outing for the year, which is kind of sad if you consider it's already mid-June.

The four of us are hanging out, having a good time, when the whole beer garden we are in pretty much goes silent. Everyone rushes to the sidewalk as this goes by:

(Images pulled from official website)

This continues for at least 5 minutes. It was just a solid stream of naked people riding by. I bet they were shouting "crack on the road" non-stop. I had forgotten it was time for the annual "Naked Ride" in Chicago. I always wondered what it was like, and I had no idea how large it was. Or how scary:

(Images pulled from official website)

Always got to give props to anyone willing to ride around down naked to make a statement against oil dependency. I've got my fair share of road rash scars on my butt to not want to go around showing off my derrier, but the next ride is June 13th of 2009.

The Ragbray

In July's issue of Bicycling magazine, they had a blurb with John Karras, the inventor of the greatest ride on the planet (except the Tour day France of course), called Ragbrai. It's a seven day ride across the state of Iowa, covering an average of 75 miles each day. You camp each night in a new small Iowa town along the course, each of which gets gussied up like it's Homecoming. It's always a festival. There's about 20,000 riders who take part of Ragbrai, so the ride is very much a steady stream of cyclists for the entire day.

I have taken part in 10 Ragbrai's in the past 12 years, having missed the last two. The first miss was to go to Duathlon Worlds in Cornerbrook, the then last year because I ran out of vacation time due to Hawaii. There was some concern about this year, on whether I would be missing again, but I assure you, I will be there. (They had even pulled out the team handbook or rules and by-laws to inform me I would be off the team if I missed 3yrs in a row.)

I'm sure I'll write more about Ragbrai as it approaches in late July, but I more or less wanted to write about the Bicycling Magazine article more than anything else. The only Ragbrai experience I have ever seen was very akin to spending the week in Mardis Gras. It's been the "holy ground" of doing everything I enjoy: riding bicycles, debauchery, hanging with friends, and drinking beer. Maybe the occasional ride in the police cruiser, but that's always been someone else, not me.

So, I'll say I'm disappointed when I saw John Karrass's statement:

"RAGBRAI's reputation as a wild party is exaggerated. The orgy crowd makes up a small number of the masses and tends to congregate at the rear of the pack. I ride in the middle, and have yet to see a bar breast or naked beer slide"

I was also a bit concerned. Having been responsible for a ride such as Ragbrai, and not having seen these shenanigans is like being a parent and not checking up on your teenager with that fully stocked fridge of beer you left behind when you went to spend the weekend at the Hamptons. Yes, I do admit that the shenanigans do take place at the rear, but everyone else leaves too early, and most of us are hung over from the night before to leave before 9am. As for the "exaggerated" part, the only articles I've ever really seen about the Ragbrai were always about naked beer slides and the eating of pork chops. I guess it can be skewed though, as I'm sure most editors are not going to ride in the middle of the pack and write about how they drafted behind Sally and her saddle bags.

Another thing I found sort of odd was the official pronunciation of RAGBRAI (Registers {a newspaper} Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) as "Ragbray" and not "Ragbrye". I guess I and everyone else in the BOP (Back Of Pack) have been saying it wrong too. I think it's funny how your view of events are so different depending on where you fall in the pack hierarchy.

As for the beer thing, it's everywhere. I swear it's what drives the Ragbrai economy. You can only make so much money from selling apple pie, but a small town can raise enough cash selling beer to buy a new fire truck. John's making it sound like the beer drinking only takes place at the end of the day, but that's only the second half of the equation. There is beer served at almost every small town we pass through, and some houses along the way will even leave an open keg out. The end town alcohol consumption can get ugly, where Main Street will be entirely paved with beer cans and plastic cups.

Without the BOP, and it's "reputation" that it has created, I fully believe Ragbrai would have not grown to the size it is now. It's hard to convince new people to spend one of their vacation weeks in Iowa during the hottest part of the year. If people are going to spend a week somewhere, they would rather go somewhere more exotic than cornfields. You throw in some debauchery, boozing, some good times, and you have something that people want to go on. It's just like Vegas and New Orleans- a hot desert or hot swamp. There's nothing appealing about it until you add the bare breasts, beers, and the occasional night with the local sheriff.

Eagles Don't Poop Themselves

The first thing that concerned me about this morning was putting on my shorts. As I was pulling my race shorts on, I noticed that the chainring mark that had been on it for the past two races was gone. Liz must have done a great job washing my shorts, because the stain is gone. Then I remembered, this is Liz were talking about. I looked at the size tag and believe me, I was fuming when I saw the letter "S" where "M" should have been. DAMMIT!!

Liz and I are both sponsored by TriSports.com and we have the same uniforms. As much as Liz tries to keep her stuff away from mine (because she insists mine never comes clean in the wash), sometimes her stuff makes their way into my closet. I just grabbed my uniform from my drawer while packing and didn't bother to actually check to see if it was actually my shorts or not. I pull it the rest of the way on, and it basically looked like a Speedo wrapped around a sausage on me. I unfortunately had no other choice as I had nothing else I could race in with me. After much complaining to Liz about my situation, it was decided that I would be more aerodynamic wearing tight fitting clothes. It was still uncomfortable.

The second thing that was getting to me was I had not had my usual morning regularity. I'm like clockwork in the morning and had nothing going on this morning. I had alot of pasta the night before and I was expecting SOMETHING, but I figured I would have to wait until the race site to jump into a Port-O-Potty to do it.

RedBear drove us to the race site, we walked in, got ready, and then I waited in line for the bathrooms. Waited, listened to the anthem, and then waited some more. The pro wave went off, and I was still waiting in line. I gave myself a deadline of 10minutes before my wave start to make it to the Port-O-John, and I was nowhere near getting in when I had to jump out. It would have to wait I guess.

The race start was much more aggressive this year, mainly because the water was very calm and it didn't have the "chop" the Choptank River is known for. That still didnt stop me swimming like and idiot, making zig-zag lines to the bouys and at one time having a kayak guide me back to the pack. I don't know if was me just screwing around or the outgoing tides messing with my lines, but I was further back where I should have been when I got out.

The bike was a little windy, but you could feel the heat building up already. The forcasted temperature for the day was to be 95degrees with a heat index of 102. I knew I went 25.1mph here last year, and I was pretty much on course for that now, but slowing down for the water stops was knocking a .1mph off that average this year, but I felt I was going steady enough. I had gone through 5 bottles of fluids by the 2hr mark when I caught Liz. I had been hoping for a report of where I was race-wise, and I got freaked out when she told me the race leaders had passed her 30 minutes ago. 30 Minutes? Did I hear that right? or did I hear 30 seconds? I could understand 30 seconds, but 30 minutes puts me way off the pace for this race because I knew they wouldn't be going much of a different speed than me. I dropped the hammer to try and close what I can.

I get to T2 and I see two bikes in my bracket at transition and both of athletes are still there. One is a person I don't recognize, the other is Adam, someone I've been racing with/against for the past 9 years. I exit with Adam and we run together for a mile or two. It is blisteringly hot, and the course has no shade. The pace I'm going is a little too much pressure for Adam at the moment and I have to leave him. Before I go, I tell him to stay in this game and just suffer through all. Not giving in to the heat is what it's going to take to do well here today. Speed is not going to matter. In fact, I turned off my watch because I did not want to know how pathetically slow I was going and let that play mind games on me. I catch the first guy who was completely taken out by the heat, and I saw one more figure up ahead running. I go for him. I come upon two other people from the waves ahead of me and I grill them if they know who is ahead. They say he's from a previous wave, but I wasnt going to take that chance until I get him. At mile 6, I get close enough to see he is TriSport.com sponsored and his number is 352(I was 572), but the sweat had wiped away his age. Right then my stomach drops, telling me the pasta is ready. I duck into the nearest Port-o-Loo and make the quickest deposit of the century.

Back on the course, 352 has gained on me again. At the turn around, Adam is close behind, still in the game and looking determined not to give in. I yell something at him and he yells something back. I'm trying to do more math on 352 on whether he in my wave or not. Next time I need to look at the numbers that are IN my wave so I know next time this happens. Not going to take any chances, so I lay it on some more to gain time on 352, and it burns. The ice water helps cool me down, but on the picked up pace, it only lasts seconds. The ice dumped into the jersey only feels like rocks tumbling around on my belly. I remember that this is how Kona felt and the only thing you could do was take in as much water as you could and forget the pain. It's better to pretend you are somewhere else and focus on letting go of the pain rather than to try fight it.

I get close to 352 at the 11 mile mark, but not as close as I was at 6. My stomach drops again. I believe my body was afraid I was trying to kill it, and it did the fight or flight reflex, making the body get rid of everything unnecessary. I had to go, and go bad, really bad. I had already lost the gap on 352 at mile 6, and I was not going to let the race pass me by while I was sitting in the shitter. There were not enough miles to make up lost time and I had to do something.

So I did what is probably going to scar me for the rest of my life. In fact, it's been on my mind more so than anything else that has happened since then. For the first time in 30+ years, and as a full grown adult, I shit myself. I was hoping for maybe a "shart" or a "squirt", something that I could do discretely and stay the game. But no, it was HUGE!! So huge that it filled up the back of my shorts (actually Liz's shorts) and was swaying around as I ran. I reached back scooped out a handful and flung it at the curb. Disgusting! Wiped my hand on my jersey and kept running. I was not going to catch 352, but in looking behind me, I had put a solid gap between me and everyone else. I had to trust 352 was not my wave, but I had given alot to get close and I was on fumes coming in. I saw the finishing arch and had the strength to hold the pace across the line.

People started coming up to me as I finished. They wanted to take me timing chip, give me a metal, see if I needed a trip to medical, etc. I avoided them all when I saw a guy with the hose. I made a direct line for him and asked him to hose me down. The cold water felt so good. That's when the question came out. "Did you fall down?" At first I didn't get it. I had no road rash or scraped knees to indicate a fall. "You have mud all over you." Then I get it. Mud~shit~mud. Brilliant!!!! Yes!! I did fall down! That is mud all over me! For the love of God, please hose me down!!!! As soon as I got done hosing down, I made beeline for the Choptank dove in, took everything off and swam away. I had never been so disgusted like that. Ever.

Waiting for results took forever. I found 352 and confirmed that he was a previous wave (much to my relief). As far as I could tell, I was the first finisher from my wave. Adam had stuck with it and came in just behind me. I was elated when I found out I had posted top 3 OA and in the Kona slots. It was tremendous pressure off, not having to hope for a roll down. I would get to choose for myself whether I was going to the big island or not. I gave Adam a congratulations for making a spot too and we waited for the sign in.

The waiting for the sign in was hot and in the sun. It seemed like it took forever, but for Adam and I, it was worth the wait for we had worked incredibly hard to get the opportunity.

Red Bear and his natural habitat, the Beer Cave.

JB before the carnage.

Red Bear doesnt know what is about to hit him.

JB and Red Bear after spending 6hrs racing in 100degree+ conditions.

When life gives you lemons, make Hot Pants.

4am

Eagleman. It's going to be hot and there are going to be alot of fast people out there. I need to get past them all. If I fail it's not because I wasnt trying.

Burning the Mule

I work in a small office building. It's a six story deal with about 4 medium sized suites on each floor. My office is on the first floor and all four suites share the same bathroom located in the lobby. Since the entry and exit vestibules are also on the first floor, the lobby is actually quite large. We recently acquired a new neighbor a few months ago, in the form of a General Practice Medical Office.

Having pretty much spent my entire working career in offices, I have grown with my experiences to develop my own methods of handling the #2 during office hours. When I first started out from college, I did make some newbie mistakes like dropping anchor in the "decorative" bathroom located next to the cubicles. It really was there for looks and the occasional hand washing, but it was not by no means a service duty unit. Taking care of business should have been done in the "working" bathroom, which all the labor employees used, located on the factory floor. It was dirty, noisy and ugly, but dammit, it could handle it.

My second job took me to a technology office, where I worked surrounded by engineers and other highly educated people. To my chagrin, I would often find nose buggers wiped on the wall next to the urinal. The two things that always puzzled me was: 1) Why does someone have one one hand on their doodle and the other shoved up their nose? 2) Why is a grown man with supposedly a higher education find that the only resort of getting rid of a bugger is to wipe it on the wall?

What I did find kind of funny about the technology office thing was that the office was sort of split between two sides by an invisible psychological barrier. I think what made the dividing line was the office had two sets of bathrooms on each side of the building. What determined what "side" of the building you were on was determined by your proximity to the nearest bathroom. When we first moved into the building, we filled up only one side. People, including myself, would make the trip to the relatively vacant "other side" bathroom to drop the log. What was hilarious about this was, as the office started to fill up, people would come from the other side to use our bathroom, just like how we would migrate to their side to use theirs. Both sides really were just as crowded, but there was something about not pooping around people knew you.

So in my current office situation, I usually migrate up a few floors to one of the vacant office centers, using my coveted "skeleton" key I got from one of the previous maintenance guys, to restock the brown trout. I've even gone as far to have my own supply personal toiletry wipes because the TP here is no better than emery cloth. There's no better heaven like having a hidden work toilet to call your own.

Yesterday, I was about to head out with Meredith to go get some food. My first stop was to wash the hands because I'm a germ freak and the keyboard is the dirtiest thing in your office. As I step out into the lobby, something does not smell right, in fact it smells downright awful. I ask Meredith, "What is that smell?". As I open the door to the bathroom, I'm greeted with an eye-watering blast of stench that could only be described as burning mule. Meredith, who was probably 5ft behind me when I opened the door, screams out "Holy Shit!! That stinks like Hell!"

I in turn hurl a bunch of epitaphs about the smell too. Instead of just turning around and walking away, my idiotic-one-track-germ-freakish mind makes me enter this room of stench to wash my hands. Someone did not burn the mule, they tied poor mule to a stake and SCORCHED it. As I held my breath, getting the hands wet, I noticed a bathroom key lying on the sink. The guy is still in here. I glace down and see two feet with clenched toes around the base of the toilet. DAMN! I walk out and whisper to Meredith "The guy is still in there!" She responds loudly (and before the door actually closes) "He's still in there? He's marinating in his own stench!"

Poor bastard. Probably a visitor of the medical office and had no where else to unleash his army of darkness, but damn, eat something healthier!!!

ps. I walked into the bathroom this morning at 7am. Considering that this happened at 1pm yesterday, I was still impressed/disgusted at the fact that I could still smell a faint odor of the scorched mule.

Memphis In May

It's a been a little busy for me lately. Lots of actual work to do at my work (no kidding), plus lots of bike repairs for people as summer rolls around and people discover that most bike shops have a 6 week wait list.

A little late but first on my list...

Memphis in May has always a good time. They have a great post race BBQ, good weather, plus I have inexplicably been to Graceland four times (not even an Elvis fan). This year our car-pool for the 10 hours down were Eric and Liz Ott, Lauren Jenson, wifey, and me. The trip down was the typical road-trip nonsense including the typical game of "Uncle" for bathroom breaks and the occasional death threat if we stop at Lambert's "Home of the Throwed Roll" Cafe. (It's in Sikeston, Missouri, where I-55 and I-57 meet. It's been featured on the Travel Network's Top 10 list of places to pig out.)

We stayed in a hotel outside of Millington because of a booking error prevented us from staying by the race site, but at least the hotel was nice. The past few times I had been there, the hotel choices were sketchy...to the point where you slept with your clothes on because you were afraid of the bed sheets. This time we stayed near Germantown, which is basically a rubber-stamped, commercialised suburb with every chain restaurant/retail outlet you would ever want including lack of character. It was like I never left home.

We made our way down to Orgill Park for our packet pickup and pre-race warm-up rituals which would be biking, running, swimming for today. Every year, Memphis is a little like the first day at school. Everyone you know is pretty much down there and you often would have not seen any of them since the end of last summer, so it's always a game of running and chit-chatting to catch up. This year was more difficult than the past because with the creation of Liz's blog, everyone wanted to flag her down and talk. It was getting almost ridiculous, as a 2 mile jog took near 30 minutes because of all the stops, which was not doing much good as a pre-race warm-up. I'm just glad I wasn't Liz at that point, as I didn't have to be "ON" all the time like she did, and I could do my favorite act of blending in with the woodwork. Once everything was taken care of, we wrapped things up back at the hotel and got ready for Sunday.

Being well prepared for a race means that on race day, nothing unusual or remarkable has to happen to make it to the start line. We had a smooth start and I got to see Liz take off in her first Pro race. She was 32nd of 35 of the TT start, so I knew she would have alot of work catching up to the race in front of her. I lingered around long enough to see her do T1 in pretty much DFL, but she looked determined to out-bike people.

Memphis has a rare TT start, where you take off every 3 seconds instead of a wave. It's pretty much a stress-free experience at the start because you just line up, and next thing you know, you're 100yds into the water and not getting any elbows to the face. I aged up this year into the 35-39 group (even though I'm really still 34), and my seed time was set further back than it had been when I was in the 30-34 category. The swim was cold, but fast, and I mainly tried to hold form over powering through the water. Jumped out of the water a bit slower than last year, but when I came out, I was really fresh and my arms weren't all swollen from the effort.

Got on the bike and hit the course. The problem I realize now about starting later is that instead of having 50 people to work through, I now had about 600. I was scared quite a bit a few times, passing someone weaving around at 15mph while I was doing a solid 30. I felt a little bit bad at times because I would have to cut close as I passed so quickly, but it's not like I can yell ahead going 30mph loud enough for them to hear me. I'm a strong proponent of creating a middle category for people in my situation, where they aren't pro, but don't really belong in the middle pack AG anymore either. I think it would make things better and safer for everyone. The speed differential is eventually going to cause an accident. The bike was windier this year, but split-wise, I ended up with a faster time than 2007, which was nice. I felt I had struggled more last year, while this year I kept the pace more even.

As I was coming off of the bike, I could see yellow pollen blowing off the pine trees on the last stretch. I knew I was going to pay for that with my bad allergies for tree pollen. Got off onto the run, taking the first 1/2 mile under control to get the breathing down. My "controlled" pace is still probably 10seconds/mile too fast, but my brain doesn't know any better. I had a some fear of some burly GO Army guy who came in behind me on the bike, as if he had stayed with me on the start of the run, he would have given my concentration a nil. Thankfully he stayed behind me.

I knew the course, keeping each landmark I knew as a goal to get so I could keep my mind off the uncomfortableness of running hard. I saw Liz coming the other direction and she stopped to cheer. Said something about her leg cramping. I didn't need to know her explanation, I just understood. I had been to this place a couple times before, where the race just isn't going your way and you just simply call it a day. Liz had never understood why I have at least a dozen DNF's to my name, but today she did. I knew Liz had alot on her mind about her race preparedness, especially coming from St. Croix, and when everyone is watching, it's hard to keep going when your game face is not on.

At the turn around, I did some quick counting of race numbers and saw one guy who was significantly ahead of our start time difference and I would have to put X:XX amount of more time into him on the last 5K. What's funny about doing X:XX split math is I'm almost never right. When I'm going hard, I cant do 1+1, yet alone try to do all the math wizardry involved in calculating a TT start. All I knew was that I better hurry the hell up if I didn't want him to beat me.

The last mile was tough. The pollen in the air seeped in enough into my lungs where I couldn't breathe anymore. It felt I was down to 1 lung of capacity, as I was seemingly going into hyperventilation with the amount of breaths per minute. I just kept the legs turning over faster and faster, but on that final levy, I was pretty much winded and was lucky not to have anyone contest me at the finish. In the results, the next guy ahead of me came in front by just 7 seconds, using his running game to make up time on me. If it had been a mass start instead of wave, I knew he still would have still gotten me in the final kick, as I had nothing left down the chute.

I ended up losing the AG win by the guy X:XX ahead of me, which actually turned out to be something like 1:45, but I broke 2 hours here again. This was a big goal of mine from last year, and I knew I could do it again. I felt really good afterwards, except I developed a sore stitch in my side from all the breathing. I feel I could have rolled it again, except for that. My next big race is Eagleman, which MIM was a warm-up for. I will be really happy if I can feel like MIM there.

(Eric by the "Godfather" of fireworks. An $800 boxed set of mayhem guaranteed to get the attention of all the cops in a 3mi radius once lit. We would have bought this if there hadn't been 5 bikes already in the van, or 2 girls named Elizabeth that we have to answer to.)